New Ponemon Institute Survey Reveals Time to Identify Advanced Threats is 98 Days for Financial Services Firms, 197 Days for Retail

Burlington, Mass., May 19, 2015 – Financial Services and Retail organizations agree, advanced threats are the most serious security challenge facing their organizations. Despite the concern, both industries struggle to identify these attacks once they are inside their network, according to a new Ponemon Institute Survey, sponsored by Arbor Networks, a leading provider of DDoS and advanced threat protection solutions for enterprise and service provider networks.

Known as ‘dwell’ time, the time it takes to identify these attacks is 98 days for Financial Services firms, and 197 days for Retail. Despite these results, 58 percent of Financial Services and 71 percent of Retail organizations said they are not optimistic about their ability to improve these results in the coming year. This is alarming considering the number of attacks targeting their networks. Within Financial Services, 83 percent experienced more than 50 attacks per month, while 44 percent of Retail firms did.

“The big takeaway from our research is that more investment is needed in both security operations staff and in security tools, which can help companies efficiently and accurately detect and respond to security incidents,” said Dr. Larry Ponemon, chairman and founder, Ponemon Institute. “The time to detect an advanced threat is far too long; attackers are getting in and staying long enough that the damage caused is often irreparable.”

“It’s time to find a better balance between technology solutions, usability, workflow and the people who use them. As security vendors, we need to help our customers so they can adapt to this new cyber security reality that balances the threats with the people who fight them every day,” said Matthew Moynahan, president of Arbor Networks.

Overview

In the wake of high profile mega breaches, the Ponemon Institute, surveyed Financial Services and Retail firms in North America and Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA) to better understand how they are dealing with attacks targeting their organizations. The survey asked how these organizations manage the explosion in advanced threats and distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks targeting their infrastructure; how effective (or not) their IT investments are; and how they are adapting incident response procedures and integrating threat intelligence for better visibility, insight and context.

Key Findings Among Financial Services Firms

Advanced Threats

71 percent view technologies that provide intelligence about networks and traffic as most promising at stopping or minimizing advance threats during the seven phases of the Kill Chain

45 percent have implemented incident response procedures

43 percent have established threat sharing with other companies or government entities

DDoS Attacks

55 percent consider DDoS attacks as an advanced threat

48 percent ‘Strongly Agree’ or ‘Agree’ that they are effective in containing DDoS attacks

45 percent have established threat sharing with other companies or government entities to minimize or contain the impact of DDoS attacks

Financial Services Organizations surveyed include 844 IT and IT security practitioners in North America and in 14 countries in Europe, Middle East & Africa (EMEA)

Retail organizations surveyed include 675 IT and IT security practitioners in North America and in 14 countries in Europe, Middle East & Africa (EMEA)

In both cases, only IT practitioners who are familiar with their companies’ defense against cyber security attacks and have responsibility for directing cyber security activities within the company were selected to participate

Supporting Resources:

Register to attend the webinar: “Ponemon Institute: The Cost of Time To Identify & Contain Advanced Threats”; May 21, 2015 at 11:00am ET

Download the full reports: “Advanced Threats in Financial Services - A Study of North America and EMEA” and “Advanced Threats in Retail – A Study of North America and EMEA” (registration required)

Visit our blog for a Q&A with Larry Ponemon on some of the most surprising findings from each report

About the publisher

About Arbor NetworksArbor Networks, Inc. helps secure the world’s largest enterprise and service provider networks from DDoS attacks and advanced threats. Arbor is the world’s leading provider of DDoS protection in the enterprise, carrier and mobile market segments, according to Infonetics Research. Arbor’s advanced threat solutions deliver comprehensive network visibility through a combination of packet capture and NetFlow technology, enabling the rapid detection and mitigation of malware and malicious insiders. Arbor also delivers market-leading analytics for dynamic incident response, historical analysis, visualization and forensics. Arbor strives to be a “force multiplier,” making network and security teams the experts. Our goal is to provide a richer picture into networks and more security context - so customers can solve problems faster and help reduce the risk to their business.